Matthias Rath, M.D.

The alternative therapy
movement as a whole has demonstrated itself to be so dangerously,
systemically incapable of critical self-appraisal that it cannot step up
even in a case like that of Rath....--Ben
Goldacre

According to the
Dr. Rath Health Foundation
website (RHF),
Matthias Rath is "the physician and scientist who led the breakthrough
discoveries in the natural control of cancer, cardiovascular disease and
other chronic health conditions." These discoveries, according to the
RHF, "rank among the most important discoveries of all time in the field
of medicine." However, few physicians and scientists who are aware
of Rath's work agree with this assessment.

He claims he has discovered that

atherosclerosis, heart attacks and strokes are an early form of
scurvy caused by a chronic vitamin deficiency of the vascular wall;

long-term vitamin deficiency is the primary cause of high blood
pressure, heart failure, circulatory problems in diabetes, and other
related cardiovascular diseases;

cancer growth and metastasis can be prevented by the optimum supply of
lysine and other natural substances blocking the enzymatic digestion of
the connective tissue by cancer cells.

But Rath's most monumental achievement is the discovery of cellular
medicine, the study of "the role of micronutrients as biocatalysts in a
multitude of metabolic reactions at the cellular level."*
Briefly, cellular medicine defines "the optimum supply of vitamins and other
bio-energy molecules ... that will allow the prevention, treatment and
eventually the eradication of today's most common diseases."*

Rath claims his vitamin therapy can even cure cancer.
But after one of his
patients died, he was ordered by a Berlin court to stop advertising such
claims in Germany or face a fine of €250,000.The court ruling centered on the death of a nine-year-old boy, Dominik Feld,
who died after being taken off chemotherapy and put on Rath's vitamin treatment. The boy's mother supports Rath and denies her son
even had cancer.*
She blames scientific medicine and the drug industry for her son's death.
Rather than accept their son's tragic fate, she and her husband turned to Rath's unconventional therapy for young Dominik. In November 2003,
Germany's social services obtained a court order to remove the boy from his
parents' custody on the grounds that they were not acting in his best
interests. Rath gives his version of the story on his website. According to him, his
medicine works and those who say otherwise are dupes of the pharmaceutical
industry.

Despite Rath's claims regarding the wonders of his vitamins, several
countries forbid the sale of his products because the vitamin doses are too
high to be classified as nutritional supplements and the products have not
passed the required scientific tests to be labeled as medicines. Nor can
they be called foods because they claim to have healing properties, which
is not allowed for food products.

Rath is well known for his war against the pharmaceutical industry,
which he has accused of genocide on the world in its lust for profits.*
When the drug companies aren't producing drugs that kill or injure people,
they are producing drugs that are useless.
"Eighty percent of pharmaceutical drugs currently prescribed to patients
have no proven efficacy," says Rath. "At the very best, they only alleviate
symptoms without addressing the root cause of the disease."*
To which millions of people with any sense say "isn't that wonderful!" Sure,
we'd like a pill that would eliminate allergies, diabetes, high blood
pressure, or schizophrenia, but
alleviating symptoms is a welcome second-best.

Rath achieved some notoriety when he took out a full-page ad
in the New York Times1 and other
newspapers in which he refers to pharmaceutical firms as "the pharmaceutical
drug cartel" and charges that this cartel promotes antiretroviral drugs "to
maintain their global market with patented AIDS drugs." Despite the evidence
that these drugs are effective, he claims that pharmaceutical firms know not
only that they are ineffective but also that they are aimed at
increasing the spread of AIDS. He calls all efforts to stop the AIDS
epidemic in Africa, which threatens to decimate the population, a conspiracy
of the pharmaceutical industry and its minions George Bush, Tony Blair, Paul
Wolfowitz, and others. He even asks rhetorically of George Bush: "Were you
deliberately allowing this tragedy [9/11] to happen to create a media
diversion to ensure the survival of the sinking pharmaceutical investment
business?"*
Rath has even issued "instructions to George Bush" in which he says: "You
will not start World War III as a smoke screen to prevent the demise of the
fraudulent drug business."*
Rath calls Bush "the main political executor of the interests of the
pharmaceutical/petrochemical cartel." It is safe to say that Rath has a bee in his bonnet about the "drug cartel."

His solution to the AIDS
epidemic in Africa is the same as his solution to nearly all health
problems: "micronutrients,"
i.e., vitamins, minerals, and other supplements. Rath claims that
micronutrients "can prevent and cure most diseases." For a mere £16 ($29) a
month, anyone can be protected from nearly every disease.*
Rath's vitamin business reportedly brings in millions of dollars a year.

Rath has found an ally in this war on the "drug cartel" in South Africa's
health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, "who has made it clear she
favours the healthy properties of garlic, lemon, beetroot and olive oil and
will not back the use of the antiretrovirals which have stopped the death
toll [from AIDS] in the west."*
There are an estimated 5 million people with AIDS in South Africa. According
to the
Guardian:

Médecins sans Frontières, which runs three HIV
clinics in Khayelitsha treating nearly 2,000 people with Aids drugs, said
yesterday that after three years, four out of every five people on the
treatment were still alive. Without drugs, half would have died within a
year. Those who died mostly had advanced Aids before starting treatment.
Only four deaths could be directly linked to drug toxicity.

Critics of Rath's micronutrient theories are condemned as
lapdogs of the drug industry. Among those critics are the
Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cancer.
As noted above, Rath claims that micronutrients can prevent cancer.
According to the Swiss report:

After examining the literature and other available
information, the Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative
Methods in Cancer (SKAK) and the Swiss Cancer League (SCL) have found no
proof that the vitamin preparations of Dr. Matthias Rath have any effect
on human cancer....

So far there are only a few studies
that indicate a causal link between micronutrients and cancer. A
cancer-curing effect has not been documented for any of these substances.
Nor is there any proof that the preparations sold by Matthias Rath, some
with high dosages, are useful in cancer prevention – leave alone curing
cancer. Rath still owes proof regarding the correctness of his claims.
Proof of effect cannot be provided by analogy with in vitro, animal or
cell experiments. Because there is no proof for effect nor for the
harmlessness of the preparations, SKAK advises against their use.*

Rulings banning his strident publicity leaflets and
website claims by the
Advertising Standards Authority in the UK and the
Food
and Drug Administration in the US, together with detailed and damning
critiques from the Swiss study group for complementary and alternative
methods in cancer and the
British Medical Journal, have not softened his messianic tone.

According to
Dr. Stephen Barrett,
"in 2005, the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa ordered the
Dr. Rath Foundation Africa
to stop advertising that dietary supplements are safer and more effective
than chemotherapy against HIV infections."

Rath may be a
quack but he is quack with a pedigree. According to his
website, he was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1955. His website doesn't
mention what medical school he graduated from but after graduation he was
employed by the University Clinic of Hamburg and the German Heart Center in
Berlin. He became friends with Linus Pauling who was impressed with Rath's
work on the connection between vitamin C deficiency and liproprotein(a). In
1990 he became the first Director of Cardiovascular Research at the Linus
Pauling Institute in Palo Alto, California. Pauling, as most people know,
became an advocate of massive daily doses (10,000 mg) of vitamin C. Because
he was a two-time Nobel laureate and one of the greatest scientific minds of
the 20th century, Pauling attracted many followers who
worship at the vitamin C altar. What many people either don't know or choose
to ignore is that many scientists believe that the studies he based his belief on were flawed. "The
Mayo Clinic conducted three double-blind studies involving a total of 367
patients with advanced cancer. The studies, reported in 1979, 1983, and
1985, found that patients given 10,000 mg of vitamin C daily did no better
than those given a placebo. Moreover, high doses of vitamin C can have
significant adverse effects. High oral doses can cause diarrhea. High
intravenous [IV] dosage has been reported to cause kidney failure due to clogging
of the kidney tubules by oxalate crystals"
(Barrett:
2000).The defenders of vitamin C point out that the Mayo studies didn't
introduce vitamin C intravenously, which is necessary, they say, for it to
be toxic to cancer cells. (As I understand it, the evidence for vitamin C
being toxic to cancer cells is based on in vitro studies and it is not
necessarily the case that what works in vitro will work in vivo.) Stephen
Lawson of the Linus Pauling Institute says that diarrhea does not occur with
intravenous vitamin C and that "the question of whether or not
high-dose vitamin C has value as adjunctive cancer therapy is still open"
(personal correspondence).

Pauling once said that the key to having good ideas is to have lots of ideas
and throw away the bad ones.* The problem, of course, is how to recognize the
bad ones. With this is mind, there is some irony that Pauling thought of
Rath as his successor.*

1The Dr. Rath Health Foundation
website does not state
that Rath took out an advertisement in the paper. The website implies
that the New York Times did a feature on Rath. In one of his
diatribes against the pharmaceutical industry, he claims: "From the
New York Times and other leading newspapers around the world, the
information that the AIDS epidemic is an immune deficiency that can be
controlled by vitamins and other natural means has reached the four corners
of the world." The website makes no mention that the reference is to a paid
advertisement, not a news story.

Reuters.
June 13, 2008. "The Cape High Court ruled against German physician
Matthias Rath and U.S. doctor David Rasnick, a former member of Mbeki's AIDS
advisory council, in response to a case brought by the lobby group Treatment
Action Campaign (TAC) and the South African Medical Association (SAMA).The
two bodies accused Rath of conducting illegal clinical trials among poor
blacks and profiteering by selling and distributing unregistered vitamin
treatments among poor communities."

CapeTimes. September 5, 2005. "The Minister of Health Manto
Tshabalala-Msimang and the Medicines Control Council (MCC) will be taken to
court if they do not take immediate action to stop the Dr Rath Health
Foundation conducting illegal medical experiments on HIV-positive
Khayelistsha residents."

SundayTimes.Zambia. "The
controversial Dr. Rath Health Foundation has used people with HIV as human
guinea pigs in a series of illegal medical experiments, touting cocktails of
vitamin tablets as a treatment for the disease."

Rath may not advertise - not even in pamphlets -
without the approval of the advertising authorities.

However, the Rath Foundation said it would ignore the
ruling."

CapeTimes. August 16, 2005. Anthony Rees, a former employee of the Dr
Rath Foundation, alleges that the vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath would
try to censor anyone who criticised his organisation. Rath is suing Rees for
defamation.

CapeTimes. August 17, 2005. Rath is suing a few other people, too.
"Controversial vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath is suing the Cape Times,
former education minister Kader Asmal, and others in the Cape High Court for
damages over the publication of alleged "offensive" remarks against his Dr
Rath Foundation." Asmal said that Rath was "a dangerous charlatan", his
activities were "quackery", he was incapable of showing virtues of
compassion and caring for ill people, and compared him to "the late
unlamented (Joseph) Goebbels".